


Easy Silence

by Periphyton



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Character Study, Dixie Chicks, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, F/M, Immediately Post-Canon, Other, Song fic, everybody needs a hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-19
Updated: 2020-01-19
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:14:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22313863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Periphyton/pseuds/Periphyton
Summary: A song fic and character study about how most of the main actors needed a break and a hug after the Armageddidn't. Sweet, angsty, and tender.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 12
Kudos: 24





	Easy Silence

**Author's Note:**

  * For [obsidian_GSD](https://archiveofourown.org/users/obsidian_GSD/gifts).



> This song broke me when I first heard it, and it breaks me every time I still listen to it. Every verse seemed to fit the characters in Good Omens (except for Anathema and Newt, sorry) and I've been itching to write this for months.

Easy Silence, By The Dixie Chicks copyright 2006

_When the calls and conversations/ Accidents and accusations  
Messages and misconceptions/ Paralyze my mind  
Buses, cars, and airplanes leaving/ Burning fumes of gasoline  
And everyone is running/ And I come to find a refuge in the_

_Easy silence that you make for me  
It's okay when there's nothing more to say to me  
And the peaceful quiet you create for me  
And the way you keep the world at bay for me  
The way you keep the world at bay _

In the Tadfield Countryside . . . 

Marjorie made a tray of tea and biscuits, and brought it over to where her husband Thomas sat on the porch outside. They finally had their tiny cottage, out of the hustle and crowds of London. Here they could retire from being Madame Tracy and Sargent Shadwell, and just be Marjorie and Thomas. She sat down next to him and they shared the tea and biscuits with a smile and nod, without needing more words. She had had enough of words, working as Madame Tracy. Enough conversations with people who listened to only what they wanted to hear, and even if the words came from her, they had nothing to do with Marjorie. They weren’t even from Madame Tracy, but from whatever spirit voice her customers where paying to hear. 

Sometimes she read them wrong, or the messages they wanted weren’t the messages they needed, or felt they deserved. When that happened all she could do was try to talk her way out of it, talk them down from their pain and entitlement even when they took it out on her. Or rather, when they took it out on Madame Tracy. She had put on Madame Tracy like a mask every day as she put on her makeup. But now she just put on a little blush and lip gloss to be Marjorie, and sit out on the porch with a man who didn’t demand more words from her as they sat together and watched the sky change to night.

Thomas sipped his tea, sweet and strong, and listened to the frogs and crickets as night started creeping in. He had been a country boy once, running through fields and around trees, until he had to run away to the city to escape his mother’s madness. There he learned that it wasn’t his real mother who had tormented him until he could no longer bear it, but a witch that had stolen her away and taken her place. His real mother had loved him, held him, fed him when was hungry and sang him lullaby’s at night, he was sure of it even though he couldn’t remember any of it. It was a witch that he had to flee from, not his real mother. Once he understood that he had tried to make other people aware of the danger they were in, so that other children wouldn’t lose their mothers the way he had. Learning to steal, to pick locks, to survive in jail, all that had just been how he survived first in Glasgow, and then in London. He learned to live with it: the constant noise, the smell of petrol, grease, the crush and crowds of the city, the unending rush of cars and buses moving, planes over head marking the sky. 

In the end, all that was left to do was to shout himself hoarse at people who walked past and turned away so they didn’t have to look at him. Nobody ever looked at him, not even the slick bastard or the southern pansy who he tricked into paying him. But now he could sit quietly with his jezebel and listen to the birds again, with a fresh breeze cool against his face and a warm cup of tea. She smiled at him, she looked at him and saw him, and neither had to strain their voice with more words to feel at peace with each other. 

_Monkeys on the barricades  
Are warning us to back away  
They form commissions trying to find  
The next one they can crucify_

_And anger plays on every station  
Answers only make more questions  
I need something to believe in  
Breathe in sanctuary in the_

_Easy silence that you make for me  
It's okay when there's nothing more to say to me  
And the peaceful quiet you create for me  
And the way you keep the world at bay for me  
The way you keep the world at bay _

Somewhere in Heaven . . . 

The Archangel Fucking Gabriel sat at his desk and stared out the glass walls while thoughts and plans shifted through his head at angles and speeds that no human could comprehend. But behind all that was the dread and unease of not knowing what to do, or even when or how it all went wrong. He was supposed to be leading the Heavenly Host to victory by now – not sitting at his desk with rumors building under the cold silence of Heaven. Rumors about how he had lost control of a simple Principality, that nervous, obedient wildcard that had always been anxious to please even if he never quite measured up, until suddenly he was standing side by side with a demon and shattering the very foundations of Gabriel’s existence with a single question about God’s plans. 

Somewhere, someone had made a mistake, and somehow, somebody had to pay for it. Mistakes could only be punished or fixed, not forgiven, not for angels. For the first time ever the cold light of Heaven filled Gabriel with dread, the cold, judgmental silence that analyzed his actions and found them wanting. Aziraphale could have told him that this is what Heaven sounded like to him every time he came here for a report, but Gabriel would never have understood it, or he would have considered it a failing on the other angel’s part. But now he heard it, and even worse he heard Her silence. She should have said Something, it was Her plan he had dedicated is existence to, but now he didn’t understand what was the point of his existence anymore. What was the point of anything that he had ever done if it was to be overturned by a rogue Principality and some minor demon? Or was this her plan for him from the beginning, and his final role was to take the blame for being obedient to the end – the angel crucified as punishment so the others wouldn’t have to take the blame for just following orders. 

He looked up as Michael came in, and handed him some reports. He nodded at her but didn’t look at them when she placed them on his desk. Then she did something no one had ever done before to Gabriel. She placed a hand on his shoulder, comforting and without judgement. 

“This was ineffible,” she told him softly. “Beyond our understanding.” 

He turned to face her, and the turn turned into an embrace. With that, at least for that moment they held the cold silence at bay, standing quietly in each other’s arms.

Somewhere in Hell . . . 

Dagon watched Beelzebub talk, growl, stare, smirk, and threaten order back into the ranks of Hell. Everyone had their long-nursed grudges against the Heavenly Hosts, and secret dreams about what they would do when they could break out of Hell. Very few had the chops to tempt humans and be successful topside, and after being denied the chance to finally fight aboveground the ranks of Hell were at a breaking point. Beelzebub was stretched more than ze had ever been since the fallout of the first rebellion, trying to prevent a second rebellion that would tear Hell apart. 

Crowley’s defection was hitting zir hard. Of course, Beelzebub had never trusted Crowley, no demon would be so stupid as to trust another demon, but Crowley had been reliable. A reliable pain in the ass, a reliable drama queen, and a very reliable whiny little piece of shit demon who thought that gluing coins on the sidewalk was actually demonic enough to warrant including in a report. But nonetheless, he had been reliable, winning souls for Hell through sheer chaos and mischief even if he never had the Effort for properly demonic evil. He had never bothered to play politics, never tested or challenged Beelzebub’s authority as the Prince of Hell. As long as his chains were jerked only occasionally and with a deft touch to remind him who owned his allegiance, he had been a reliably reliable asset to Hell, up until the day he stared down Satan side by side with a stinking angel, and pulled out of her grip the banner of revenge against the Heavenly Host.

The questions where building up right along with the anger at being denied revenge. How could a demon just leave Hell? How could an angel stand side by side with a demon and defy Heaven without Falling? The building anger whispering through Hell wasn’t just at the knee jerk turnabout on Armageddon, but that a demon had dared to break his chains and make another choice. How could he, how dare he, take a stand against Hell? But if one demon had dared, the whispers asked, what would happen if another demon tried to? 

At the moment, Beelzebub was sitting alone at zir desk after the Dark Council had left. In the void where Dagon’s heart had once been, a little bit of sludge and ashes shifted at the sight of zir sitting slumped over zir’s desk, even zir’s flies clinging to zir’s hair, too worn out to buzz around zir’s face. 

“Here,” Dagon brought Beelzebub a chipped plastic cup of bad coffee. The Prince of Hell took it gratefully and slurped. For just a moment the two demons were still, simply being in each other’s presence with the knowledge that neither would use the current chaos against each other. 

_Children lose their youth too soon  
Watching war made us immune  
And I've got all the world to lose  
But I just want to hold on to the_

_The easy silence that you make for me  
It's okay when there's nothing more to say to me  
And the peaceful quiet you create for me  
And the way you keep the world at bay for me _

Somewhere in Washington, DC . . . 

Warlock Dowling was eleven years old, and he was done crying. He was done crying over a nanny and gardener that his father insisted he didn’t need anymore, and that his mother resented that he had ever loved them at all. After a weird birthday he still couldn’t make head or tails of, the Dowlings finally returned to DC, back to his father’s world of American politics. He had to grow up now and stop sounding like a London brat and start behaving like a proper red-blooded American. He was trying, but when one of his father’s friends asked him about football, well, as Nanny would say it went down like a lead balloon. 

So Warlock wasn’t going to cry when he asked for hot cocoa and got a cup of something thin and watery that tasted like powder. He knew what real cocoa should taste like, after all the winters spent at Brother Francis’s cottage. There he could look out at the snow or rain, wrapped up in a tartan blanket with a small fire burning at the heath and surrounding by everything that made this place belong to Brother Francis. There were books stacked in chairs, on shelves, on tables, even on the floor. There was an old-fashioned tea set, a working gramaphone, and potted plants of herbs and lavender along the window that made the room smell like a garden inside. Rainy days with Brother Francis always included hot cocoa, made in a pot over the old stove with milk and real chocolate and butter melted in it, sometimes with an extra touch of cinnamon or nutmeg, and always topped off with fluffy marshmallows. 

They would toast bread over the fire using old metal hooks that speared through the crusty bread and smear it with butter from a bell jar and strawberry jam. When he was little Brother Francis would read picture books to him while he curled up in the man’s lap, and then latter he sat next to him while he read The Hobbit, Alice in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass, Little Women, The Secret Garden, and all seven Narnia books. Nobody could read out loud as well as Brother Francis, the way he did voices for each character, losing his gardening voice and sounding like the posh English politicians his father had come over, but no matter what accent he used his voice always sounded kind.

The only person with a better voice than Brother Francis was Nanny. She would sing to him, her voice rough and soft at the same time. He loved her creepy songs just as much as he loved Brother Francis’s stories about kindness to all living things. Just once since they moved to DC his father caught him singing one of her lullaby’s about crushing the world with an army of darkness, and told him to stop being such a freak because it would embarrass him in front of some boring important person. 

It wasn’t until he was halfway across the world from the only home he had ever known that Warlock realized how much Nanny and Brother Francis had shielded him from his parents world of politics. Now he had to listen to his father talk about the different military actions that America was involved in all over the world at every dinner, even when he was so bored he stopped listening. His parents had thrown out everything that Nanny and Brother Francis had left behind, but Warlock had managed to hide away his hot cocoa mug from Brother Francis’s cottage. That and the plush black and red snake stuffie that Nanny had given him for his birthday when he was five were all he had left of them to hold on to. Every night he held onto his Snaky in bed and put the mug on his bedside table, like Nanny and Brother Francis were still there somehow with him.

Back at Tadsfield

Adam sat in his bed. It didn’t seem real that his bedroom looked exactly the same as it had this morning. Surely becoming the Antichrist and defying Satan would have changed something, right? Even if the whole point of everything that had just happened was so that the world didn’t change into a scotched battlefield between Heaven and Hell. He had seen what the other angel and demon wanted, when they tried to convince him to, quote, fulfill his destiny, same as he had seen the desperate fear of the angel and demon who held his hands and promised to stand by him no matter what he chose. He had felt their terror at losing the world because it would mean they would lose each other. But they had held the world at bay just long enough for him to think clearly without the voices that had been whispering at him for the past day and night. They didn’t want to lose the world, and neither did he, which made it very easy to accept their support. But now it was over, his real father had come for him and taken him home, and he was too exhausted to sleep. 

“Adam, are you alright?” It was his mother. He looked his mother standing in the door, and wondered. It wasn’t just Arthur as his father that he rejected Satan for. Did he even have a real mother? A biological mother? How was his physical body even created? Did Satan have sex with someone, maybe a female demon, to create him? 

“Can you ever tell us what happened today?” she asked. Adam shook his head, he didn’t have words for it yet. Maybe if Satan was his real father he didn’t have a real mother at all, just his human mum. Would she still want to be his mum if she knew he was the Antichrist and his father was supposed to be Satan? Wordlessly he held his arms up for a hug. Without hesitating she came over and picked him up and held him the way she used to when he was little. He felt little, now that it was all over, and buried his head into her shoulder and held onto everything he couldn’t bear the thought of losing. 

_The easy silence that you make for me  
It's okay when there's nothing more to say to me  
And the peaceful quiet you create for me  
And the way you keep the world at bay for me  
The way you keep the world at bay for me  
The way you keep the world at bay _

Finally, in Soho

After cheating both Heaven and Hell, after laughing in the park and dining at the Ritz, the angel and the demon barely made it to the back of the bookshop before collapsing in exhausted aftermath of the adrenaline rush that was the only thing keeping them on their feet. Crowley collapsed onto his couch and Aziraphale staggered to his chair. 

“We did it,” Aziraphale whispered. “We actually did it.” 

“We did it,” Crowley replied. “And I think I’m going to sleep for a month. At least.” He yawned big enough to unhinge his jaw like the snake he was, and rubbed at his face to reset it.

“You go ahead my dear. I don’t think I’m getting out of this chair any time soon,” the angel said, and yawned in sympathetic response. 

“Aziraphale?”

“Mmm?”

“You’ll still be here when I wake up?”

“Of course.”

Crowley sighed, shifted around, and closed his eyes. All around him he could smell old books, dust, the hint of lavender and cedar Aziraphale used to keep out moths, and the lingering aroma of tea and wine. This was safety, this was sanctuary to keep the outside world at bay. This was the haven the angel created to retreat to when the human world was too overwhelming and Heaven was too demanding. And ever since the first time the demon had sprawled across the couch in the back, just after the first books were put on shelves that still had fresh sawdust in the corners, it had been Crowley’s sanctuary as well. The one place where he was known for who and what he was without being condemned by Heaven or judged by Hell. A place where he could sit quietly and just breathe, knowing he was welcome. And now after the end of the world that didn’t, a place where he could close his eyes and rest.

Aziraphale watched his sleeping demon fondly. Crowley had been magnificent, driving through fire, standing up to Hell, stopping time, all of it. His demon had earned his rest and he would keep guard over him as he had for so long. The rhythmic sound of Crowley breathing was a soothing reminder that he hadn’t lost everything, that his demon was still here, still with him, and hadn’t actually run off to Alpha Centuri in the face of Aziraphale’s pathetic loyalty to Heaven up until the very end. The angel swallowed hard against the sobs that threatened to close his throat. He had been a fool, blindly obedient to a brutal hierarchy that regarded him as nothing more than a barely competent idiot who was naïve enough to actually care for the world they had sent him to protect. He could still hear the contempt in the Metatron’s voice that no matter how many times the other angels had told him that wars were for winning, not avoiding, he was still too stupid to take them at their word. A stupid, pathetic angel that actually believed in Heaven’s propaganda about goodness, despite all evidence to the contrary. 

He let the tears run silently down his cheeks but put his hand to his mouth and bit down on it to keep from crying out loud and waking Crowley. Suddenly everything was crashed down on him, everything from the last week, the last eleven years, the last six thousand years. What was the point of anything he had ever done as an angel, if it had been for the benefit of the Heavenly Host which cared nothing for the world they told him to protect? What was even the point of him, Aziraphale, Her most useless of angels if he refused to support the War She made no effort to stop? At that moment he wasn’t even sure why Crowley still bothered with him, or that he deserved to have his bookshop back, and he was too exhausted to argue back against all the voices of Heaven that still echoed in his own head, still mocking him for being so stupid. 

“Aziraphale?” Crowley was awake and looking at him.

The angel took his hand out of his mouth and rubbed the tears off his face and tried to swallow, tried to smile reassuringly. “It’s nothing, go back to sleep, you’ve earned a rest, it’s . . . I’m . . . ok . . .”

Crowley said nothing, instead he sat up and held his arms out. When he realized that Aziraphale was shaking so hard he couldn’t get up, the demon went over, placed his hands on his shoulders and guided him back to the couch. 

“It’s all right, I’m here, I’m right here,” Crowley said softly. Aziraphale’s hand was back up covering his mouth, but Crowley moved it way, placed his own hand on the back of that curly head of hair, and drew the angel’s head against his chest. “I’m here, it’s ok, you can cry, it’s all right,” he repeated over and over.

“I’m s-s-s-or-r s-s-s-“

“Shhh, hush now, words later, just cry now, it’s alright, you’re safe, it’s ok to cry, it’s ok,” he said, holding him and rocking slightly like he had once held a young Warlock crying after a nightmare, while Aziraphale ugly cried and shook apart in his arms. The couch had enough sense to make itself able to hold both of them comfortably, even when Crowley manifested his wings and wrapped them around Aziraphale, cradling him in all four limbs. 

Aziraphale clung to Crowley and wept, not even able to miracle away the snot and tears he was getting on the demon’s shirt. He had never cried before, not like this, and nobody had ever told him in over six thousand years that everything would be alright and he safe and it was ok to cry. He had never been held since before the world was created when God had held him as She created him into being. Humans hugged him on occasion, but that wasn’t the same as being held by another supernatural being. Now he was being held, being cradled, feeling a gentle hand stroking his hair, an arm around his waist keeping him secure, and had the warmth and solid support of a flat chest to hide his face in as a gentle voice told him he was safe and it ok.

Then he felt Crowley’s wings come around him and he hiccuped in mid-sob. He was wrapped in both darkness and warmth, enough to shield him from even the memory of how cold and bright Heaven was. He blinked the tears from his eyes and peered up to seek dark, iridescent feathers surrounding him, and Crowley’s face smiling down at him. 

“Oh-h-h Cr-r-ow-l-ley I –“

“Shhhhh. Rest now, time enough for words later.” Crowley washed his face with a damp lavender-scented cloth, then held a mug to his lips. Aziraphale sipped the hot liquid that was equal parts tea, honey, lemon juice, and whiskey. The drink soothed his aching throat and calmed him enough that he finally stopped crying. When the mug was empty, he curled back into Crowley, hiding his head in the crook of the demon’s neck. There was no need for words, just the physical comfort of bodies and wings, and a couch determined to hold it all together. In time they both fell asleep, holding each other tightly to keep the world at bay from the fragile peace they found in each others arms.


End file.
